US air strikes in Afghan district under Taliban siege

The US launched air strikes Thursday to bolster Afghan forces scrambling to beat back Taliban insurgents who seized large swathes of a key opium-rich district, following the first British deployment to the volatile region in 14 months.

The Islamists claim to have captured nearly the entire district of Sangin after storming its frontlines on Sunday, tightening their grip on the southern Helmand province.

Fleeing residents reported Taliban executions of captured soldiers as the insurgents advanced on the district centre, compounding fears that the entire province was on the brink of falling into insurgent hands.

The US army conducted air strikes on Wednesday to support Afghan forces mobilising reinforcements to relieve dozens of security forces holed up in the districtcentre.

"US forces conducted two strikes in Sangin," a NATO spokesman said in a brief statement.

Dozens of militants were killed in a parallel army clearance operation, including a key commander seen as a close confidante of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the interior ministry said.

But Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed insurgents were in control of the whole district, pinning down Afghan forces in an army base where trapped soldiers reported dire conditions.

"Our men are hungry and thirsty," Abdul Wahab, a local police commander in Sangin, told AFP.

"Stepping out to get bread means inviting death," he said, adding that dozens of his comrades had been killed and critically wounded.

The war in Helmand, seen as the epicentre of the expanding insurgency, follows a string of military victories for the Taliban after NATO formally ended its combat operations last year.

All but two of Helmand's 14 districts are effectively controlled or heavily contested by the Taliban, who also recently came close to overrunning the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

The turmoil in Helmand, the deadliest province for British and US forces in Afghanistan over the past decade, underscores a rapidly unravelling security situation in Afghanistan.

Britain on Tuesday said a small contingent of its troops had arrived in Camp Shorabak, the largest British base in Afghanistan before it was handed over to Afghan forces last year.

The deployment, in addition to a recent arrival of US special forces in the region, is the first since British troops ended their combat mission in Helmand in October 2014.

The contingent, which an Afghan official said includes around 90 people, is on an "advisory" mission with London insisting they will not engage in combat.

Photo Caption: Afghan police keep watch during an ongoing battle with Taliban militants in the Marjah district of Helmand Province, on December 23, 2015 (AFP Photo/Noor Mohammad)